Friday, 28th.
Yes, study comes hard to you, my dear Enrico, as your mother says:
I do not yet see you set out for school with that resolute mind and
that smiling face which I should like. You are still intractable.
But listen; reflect a little! What a miserable, despicable thing
your day would be if you did not go to school! At the end of a week
you would beg with clasped hands that you might return there, for
you would be eaten up with weariness and shame; disgusted with your
sports and with your existence. Everybody, everybody studies now,
my child. Think of the workmen who go to school in the evening
after having toiled all the day; think of the women, of the girls
of the people, who go to school on Sunday, after having worked all
the week; of the soldiers who turn to their books and copy-books
when they return exhausted from their drill! Think of the dumb and
of the boys who are blind, but who study, nevertheless; and last of
all, think of the prisoners, who also learn to read and write.
Reflect in the morning, when you set out, that at that very moment,
in your own city, thirty thousand other boys are going like
yourself, to shut themselves up in a room for three hours and
study. Think of the innumerable boys who, at nearly this precise
hour, are going to school in all countries. Behold them with your
imagination, going, going, through the lanes of quiet villages;
through the streets of the noisy towns, along the shores of rivers
and lakes; here beneath a burning sun; there amid fogs, in boats,
in countries which are intersected with canals; on horseback on the
far-reaching plains; in sledges over the snow; through valleys and
over hills; across forests and torrents, over the solitary paths of
mountains; alone, in couples, in groups, in long files, all with
their books under their arms, clad in a thousand ways, speaking a
thousand tongues, from the most remote schools in Russia. Almost
lost in the ice to the furthermost schools of Arabia, shaded by
palm-trees, millions and millions, all going to learn the same
things, in a hundred varied forms. Imagine this vast, vast throng
of boys of a hundred races, this immense movement of which you form
a part, and think, if this movement were to cease, humanity would
fall back into barbarism; this movement is the progress, the hope,
the glory of the world. Courage, then, little soldier of the
immense army. Your books are your arms, your class is your
squadron, the field of battle is the whole earth, and the victory
is human civilization. Be not a cowardly soldier, my Enrico.